James MacMillan is a Scottish composer whose symphonies, concertos, operas, sacred music and many orchestral and instrumental works are strongly influenced by his Catholic faith. His St John Passion was premiered by Sir Colin Davis and the LSO in 2008; his specially commissioned congregational Mass was performed when Pope Benedict XVI beatified Cardinal Newman during his visit to Britain in 2010.

God preserve us from washed-up celebs and preening 'artists' telling us how to vote

Is it helpful to political causes or parties when pop stars and TV celebrities sign up to add their bit of glam to the campaign? I was wondering about this yesterday when hearing the news that the referendum on Thursday is likely to be won by the No campaign, in spite of the stardust bestowed on the opposition by Eddie Izzard, Stephen Fry et al.

In Scotland, too, we have gotten used to the popperatti, soaperatti and luvvieratti being marshaled into the political lobbies. I remember in particular, in the lead-up to the devolution referendum, various attempts to cajole people in the arts to support “independence”. There was even a “Scottish Artists For Independence” campaign, which was hatched by various comedians and pop stars, big in the 1980s…

To our lasting shame, some non-popular-culture artists were drawn in to this charade too. I have changed my position completely on devolution – the Scottish Parliament has been a leeching waste of money and energy. But back then I saw things differently. I admit to being naïve. Anyway, I remember attending a couple of meetings, utterly dominated by the huge, preening egos of members of Deacon Blue, Hue and Cry (remember them?) and local TV comedy sitcom characters. I don’t know what Peter Howson and Ken Currie now think of their appearance at these events, but I still wake up sweating with embarrassment at the memory.

The concept of independence back then was quite fluid and ambiguous, and allowed non-nationalists to voice support for the idea without going the whole hog on separation. One of the meetings was addressed by politicians – someone from Alex Salmond’s office, George Galloway when he was still Labour and at least pretending to be sane, and some nonentity from the Lib Dems. But it became apparent very quickly that the whole thing was a clever ruse by the Nationalists to garner a public statement by “the creative community” in support for secession from the UK. The lynch-pin in all this was crooner and self-appelled intellectual Pat Kane, who has since made a career as an uber-trendy Guardian/Newsnight Review commentator. The last time I saw him was at a post-devolution party at the National Museum of Scotland; the kind of lavish event where the Scottish liberal elites gather to exult in one of their regular self-congratulatory orgies of entitlement and privilege. He looked at me, with tears in his eyes and said falteringly “Look at all this James; we are now the new modern Scottish establishment.” Something snapped in me that night, and I’ve never been the same since…

Anyway, all this came back to me in a hot flush of regret when wading through the usual tedious waffle by Scotland’s third-rate politicians and their desperate cheerleaders in the media. It was, strangely, a prominent Nationalist who described Kane to me as “the David Brent of Scottish public life – he thinks he is God’s gift to the culture, but everyone else thinks of him as a complete tosser!” Scottish politics – it’s a painful business, celebrity endorsement or not.